Norwich City must wonder what happened with £8.5m signing

After a stunning comeback from their 2010 League One title, the Canaries were entering their third straight Premier League season under Chris Hughton’s direction in 2013.

When the then-24-year-old van Wolfswinkel joined for a rumoured club record £8.5 million on a four-year contract from Portuguese powerhouse Sporting CP, Hughton had already taken action to bolster his squad for the 2013–14 season in March, securing their top-flight status for another year. The deal was scheduled to take effect after the season concluded.

Given the transfer fee and his subsequent lack of goals in three years in East Anglia, van Wolfswinkel’s time at the club was nothing short of disastrous. Canaries fans will be surprised given his impressive goal-scoring exploits at most other teams he has played for throughout his career.

van Wolfswinkel struggled to comprehend the Premier League.

After the Dutchman’s debut, it appeared as though the Canaries had found a goal scorer to help them advance in the Premier League. He skilfully headed home a sliced cross to make it 2-2 and give his new team a point late in the season’s opening match against Everton, but that was as good as it got in terms of his time at Norwich.

Van Wolfswinkel went on a goalless streak after that, and the Dutch striker subsequently recounted a chat he had with manager Hughton a few months into his time at Carrow Road when City was stuck in the relegation zone.

He was honest as a result, and I accept that completely. What else could I say?

“I told him that I can understand why he knows that I always give my all and work for the team.”

Despite starting most league games in the second half of the season, van Wolfswinkel was unable to find the back of the net and ended his first season with just one goal and one assist in 25 Premier League appearances.

Despite Hughton’s dismissal in April and Neil Adams’s appointment, Hughton’s time in East Anglia came to an end when Norwich was relegated to the Championship on the last day of the season.

That summer, he left on loan to St Etienne, where he spent a respectable time until returning to Norwich in 2015. In his final game for the team, a 2-1 EFL Cup victory over Rotherham United, he scored his second and only goal.

After spending the season on loan at Real Betis in Spain, he left Norwich permanently in 2016 to rejoin his childhood team Vitesse, capping off a terribly frustrating three years.

Van Wolfswinkel’s tenure at Norwich was obviously unsuccessful for both the player and the team, but given that he has performed admirably at every other permanent club in his career thus far, it’s possible that he just struggled to adjust to the Premier League or even Hughton’s playmaking style.

As a highly-regarded and talented young player, he made his professional debut with Vitesse, where he scored eight goals in 32 games during his first full season. Two years later, he went to Utrecht, where he scored 35 goals in 80 appearances to earn a €5.4 million transfer to Sporting.

The Dutchman only got better in Portugal, where he established himself as one of Europe’s top goal scorers with 25 goals in 46 games during his rookie year and 20 goals in 40 appearances during his sophomore campaign.

His reputation suffered greatly when he was at Norwich, but after leaving Carrow Road in 2016, he bounced back at Vitesse, where he scored 23 goals in 37 games. He then moved on to Basel in Switzerland, where he scored 37 goals in 115 games over the course of four seasons.

Even though he is in his mid-30s, van Wolfswinkel is still a top-tier football player. Over the past three seasons, he has scored double digits in goals in every Eredivisie campaign while playing for FC Twente in his home country of the Netherlands.

Why he was unable to replicate his success during his time at Norwich is still a mystery, and Canaries supporters will lament his bad run. The club invested a significant amount of money in him, so they needed some sort of return to justify the expenditure. However, he fell short of expectations, and their hard work from the previous years was quickly undone when he was demoted in his first season.